Covestro to expand circular portfolio with global agreement

HONG KONG—Covestro A.G. has signed its first commercial contract for supplying its ISCC Plus certified polyurethane raw material TDI from mass-balanced feedstock to Sinomax Group, a Hong Kong-based manufacturer and distributor of polyurethane-based comfort products.

TDI (toluene diisocyanate) is a key building block of polyurethane flexible foams, but is also used in the production of polyurethane coatings and adhesives.

The first batch of the bio-attributed TDI is expected to be delivered from Covestro Integrated Site Shanghai in the first quarter of 2022. Sinomax will use the TDI in the production of mattresses, pillows and mattress toppers.

The two companies also agreed to extend their regional partnership to a global scale, with Sinomax scaling up their operations in the U.S.

Sinomax has been working to reduce carbon emission in order to reach its emissions reduction goals, said Sinomax President Eric Cheung, and Covestro's mass-balanced TDI products can contribute to achieving these. "With a global footprint, Covestro has sufficient, stable and fast delivery capacity in major markets, which is crucial to our global development," he noted.

Mass balance is a chain of custody method that allows fossil and alternative feedstock to be mixed in production but separated in bookkeeping. It can track materials through the value chains and allows attribution of alternative feedstock, like bio-based raw materials, to selected end products.

In response to demand for more sustainable products, Covestro has earned ISCC Plus certification for its Shanghai production site, enabling it to offer Asia Pacific customers large volumes of TDI, in addition to polycarbonate and MDI with alternative feedstock attributed via mass balance.

"With this new approach of incorporating sustainable raw materials into our TDI, the reduction of CO2 footprints in the flexible foam industry can be accelerated immediately and also become easily scalable," said Marius Wirtz, head of sales in the performance materials segment of Covestro in the Asia Pacific region.

The mass-balanced products boast the same good quality as their fossil-based counterparts. They can be used as a drop-in solution, which means they can be implemented in existing production processes with no need for technical modification.